So in one of the prequels, Yoda says of the Sith "Always two there are, no more, no less. A master and an apprentice."

Is this really meant to be taken completely literally? When I heard it, I figured it meant that Sith work in pairs - like says "Careful of that cop. There are always two, a cop and a partner."

But I gather that there really are just two Sith at any given time in the whole galaxy? That seem very odd to me... there were dozens if not hundreds of Jedi, it seems like the Sith are setting themselves up as permanent underdogs?

And if it is true, that would mean that the Jedi would tend to send only the best Jedi after a Sith, right? I mean, if it was your choice (and of course it often won't be), you don't send some newly graduated bottom-of-his-class type Jedi, you send your top brass.

So typically, as far as inexperienced Jedi are concerned, Sith aren't really something they're likely to have to deal with, yes? They're off doing... whatever else it is Jedi do, arbitrate trade disputes or whatever. Is that so?

Connected to that, are there "sub-Sith" ranks out there waiting to be promoted to Sith?

What I mean is, Maul gets chopped in half in Phantom Menace. So does Palpatine have to start from scratch... it must take months to recruit an apprentice, surely, so is there only one Sith for a while, in defiance of Yoda's claim? Or do Sith generally have a list of people who want to become a Sith, or at least whom they consider likely candidates that they can set out to recruit straight away?

See I had a story idea rolling around my head, and it was going to be about a young Jedi who was sent out to tackle a bad guy. I figured the bad guy would be a similar kind of deal to him, young, inexperienced, etc. But it seems like you couldn't do that story as the Jedi would never send an inexperienced person after a Sith. So I was wondering if there was some kind of "sub Sith" rank that a young Jedi might take on.

Or is there something not a Sith but like a Sith, that would be a serious opponent for a Jedi but who would be more numerous?

I really don't know Star Wars outside the movies, so a little info would be appreciated.

Give a man a fire, and you keep him warm for a day. SET a man on fire, and you will keep him warm for the rest of his life...

All this is going to be the old expanded universe canon. I have no inkling as far as the new canon is concerned.

At the time the Rule of Two was set, the Jedi believed they destroyed all of the Sith Lords. The New Sith Wars ended with the Sith being presumed extinct. Except they weren't. A last Sith Lord named Darth Bane survived. He would create the Rule of Two- a Master to embody power, an Apprentice to crave it. In fact the expectation is that the Apprentice will supplant his Master through force, and become the Master himself. So a Master must always be strong for any sign of weakness would embolden the Apprentice to quicken his master's end. The Rule of Two also removes the infighting that would occur among the many Sith Lords. Bane went into hiding, and from then on the Sith operated behind the scenes. They would no longer be an army of Sith Lords coming out to openly wage wars of conquest. The shadows were where they operated. This time frame is 1000 years before the Battle of Yavin 4 (BBY).

Jedi did not fight Sith for 1000 years until Darth Maul. However, the Jedi still seldom had lightsaber wielding enemies, such as fallen Jedi. The common term for them was "Dark Jedi." This ties in to the tale that might explain how Yoda knows about the Rule of Two,

Around 187 BBY, a Jedi Master Qornah and his padawan, Kibh Jeen, are sent to the investigate a planet, Almas, in the Cularin System because the presence of the Darkside had been felt there. Indeed there was a Sith Fortress there built by a Sith Lord Darth Rivan, incidentally one who perished in the final battle of the New Sith Wars. Almost immediately upon landing on the planet, the Darkside began whispering to Kibh Jeen. As they reached the fortress' entrance, Kibh Keen would succumb to its influence and murder his Master. He stepped into the fortress and learned the ways of the darkside but, interestingly, not of the Sith. After learning all he could, Jeen sets out to conquer the populated worlds in the Cularin System. He comes upon pirates who prey on Cularin shipping lanes, and uses the Force to dominate their minds, turning them to his will. With his new army, Jeen begins a war in the Cularin System which will be known as "The Dark Jedi Conflict." Keen learns that the Sith are not so extinct, and learns of their Rule of Two. After seven years of war, he is finally cut down by the Jedi. His last words were muttering about the Sith's Rule of Two, about how there were always two Sith, no more and no less. The Jedi didn't take this seriously, but still they told the story of Kibh Jeen and his fall as a lesson to padawans. Interestingly the Jedi did build a training facility on Almas, to establish a presence in a System ravaged by a fallen Jedi, and to study this Sith Fortress.

Now obviously that story was written to explain how Yoda knew about the Sith, when later works, such as the story of Darth Bane, would contradict this. The story of Kibh Jeen was presented in "Jedi vs. Sith: The Essential Guide to the Force," which I own.

How do Sith select Apprentices? I don't know. I am hoping The book about Darth Plagueis the Wise will shed some light on that. Otherwise, I suspect they feel the Force flowing in their targets, as well as their base feelings, looking for anger, or tragedy to exploit. Count Dooku lost his faith in the Jedi after a massacre that took the lives of Jedi and Mandalorians. Anakin lost his mother, and was in fear of losing his wife.

As for Sith ranks, outside of the video games, I don't think the SIth Lords who follow the Rule of Two had sub ranks. Emperor Palpatine did have "The Emperor's Hand." These were specialized operatives, skilled in combat, intelligence gatherings, assassination, and were Force sensitive. Palpatine did train them to use the Force but, withheld any Sith or Jedi techniques. They were also not an army of any sort. Each were convinced that they were the only Emperor's Hand. The most well known of these was Mara Jade.

Another Force Wielding group are The Nighsisters of Dathomir. There are a female ruled society, where men are just for breeding. They get their breeding stock from crashed ships. They, however, rarely leave Dathomir, since they are at their most powerful there because of some darkside power source in the planet, I can't remember. I don't think they know how to use lightsabers.

Nutso wrote:As for Sith ranks, outside of the video games, I don't think the SIth Lords who follow the Rule of Two had sub ranks. Emperor Palpatine did have "The Emperor's Hand." These were specialized operatives, skilled in combat, intelligence gatherings, assassination, and were Force sensitive. Palpatine did train them to use the Force but, withheld any Sith or Jedi techniques. They were also not an army of any sort. Each were convinced that they were the only Emperor's Hand. The most well known of these was Mara Jade.

Palpatine had a track record of this sort of thing - during the Clone Wars, there was a cadre of Force-sensitive dark side users below the "true" (badged? ordained?) members of the Sith order (in this case Darth Sidious and Darth Tyrannus), the most well-known of whom was Asajj Ventress.

To expand on the reasoning behind the Rule of Two, it's mainly to remove one of the big flaws in prior Sith doctrine of strength of numbers - the risk that a group of individually weaker apprentices could overwhelm a single much more powerful master, and then be easily picked off individually by the Jedi or fall to infighting, weakening the Sith overall. The Rule was intended to ensure that the order grew progressively more powerful over time, as embodied by the reigning Master.

Only two things are infinite - the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the universe: Albert Einstein.

Nutso wrote:As for Sith ranks, outside of the video games, I don't think the SIth Lords who follow the Rule of Two had sub ranks. Emperor Palpatine did have "The Emperor's Hand." These were specialized operatives, skilled in combat, intelligence gatherings, assassination, and were Force sensitive. Palpatine did train them to use the Force but, withheld any Sith or Jedi techniques. They were also not an army of any sort. Each were convinced that they were the only Emperor's Hand. The most well known of these was Mara Jade.

Palpatine had a track record of this sort of thing - during the Clone Wars, there was a cadre of Force-sensitive dark side users below the "true" (badged? ordained?) members of the Sith order (in this case Darth Sidious and Darth Tyrannus), the most well-known of whom was Asajj Ventress.

That's right, like Jerec, the man (Miraluka) who killed Kyle Katarn's father. He was an Inquisitor. They were Palpatine's Force user interrogators, they were used to extract information from captured Jedi.